Sheil Kapadia

Philly.com

Yesterday, LeSean McCoy took a shot at Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora, tweeting:

Overrated n soft 3rd best d-line on his team honestly

Today, the New York media caught up with Umenyiora and (surprise, surprise) got his reaction to McCoy's Tweet.

Umenyiora didn't hold back.

"That little Chihuahua or poodle in the backfield; he doesn’t have to block me," Umenyiora told Mark Viera of The New York Times. "If you have something to say, say it man to man; you can't be a Twitter gangster. That’s easy to do, trying to be a tough guy. Say it to my face, and we’ll see what happens."

Umenyiora added that he and the Giants' defense refer to McCoy as Lady Gaga.

"Oh man, that little girl?" Umenyiora said. “Why? Why would he do that? There’s no reason for that. Me and him had no personal beef on the football field, and he’s taking it off the football field. All those things he decided to say in Twitter world, him being a Twitter gangster, he could’ve said that to me face-to-face on the football field.

"But it’s out there. It’s something he can’t take back. He’ll get what he deserves, that’s for sure.”

"Yeah, me and him, we had words on the field – both times we played. I hate him, he hates me, period," Umenyiora said. "He chose to take that off the field and make it public when it’s something that’s between me and him. It’s something we can address on the football field. He let the whole world know about it, so I’m going to respond.

"Oh, he said all kinds of stuff. He called me an ‘African (blank).’ It was bad," Umenyiora said. "It was pretty intense between me and him. I said a couple of things to him. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it was rough."

Umenyiora added that there is a hatred between the current group of Eagles and Giants.

"This year was the worst in my eight-year career as far as animosity toward that team," he said. There’s a real hatred toward Phlly and there’s a real hatred for them toward us. So it was rough out there. But I feel things like that stay on the football field. Off the field, we respect each other because at the end of the day we’re all brothers. But he decided to take it so far that there’s no going back from it now."

As I mentioned yesterday, we don't know if Umenyiora will even be with the Giants next season. And there's also that whole lockout matter, meaning as of now, we don't even know if the two teams will square off at all.

But if they do, we might as well go ahead and circle the dates September 25 and November 20. The first date is a Week 3 matchup at the Linc. And the second is a Sunday night matchup at the Meadowlands in Week 11.

And while I'm not defending McCoy's initial comment, it's worth noting that Lady Gaga did average 7.29 yards per carry against the Giants in two games last season.